


Photograph

by AccioRavenclaw



Category: Team Fortress 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 03:21:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4375265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccioRavenclaw/pseuds/AccioRavenclaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Very few things are known about the elusive Spy.  But like everyone else even he has a past, which is brought to mind one night by the only photograph he keeps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Photograph

**Author's Note:**

> I often feel that Spy is one of those character’s who isn’t explored as much as the other’s, so this was my attempt to fix that a bit.

He double checked the locks for the fourth time that night before finally undressing. The mask was the first to go. Spy knew it to be such a useless cliché, but the disguise kit refused to work unless his own features were obscured. He ran a hand though his dark hair, ruffling it from its flattened state, and letting out a sigh he’d been holding back for quite a while. His bones ached and a part of him longed for another cigarette. But freeing himself from the sweltering suit took priority.

The sounds of the desert base: yelling, laughing, the sounds of various animals and insects, seeped in through the paper thin walls of his tiny room. He carefully sat into his rather uncomfortable bed, the bedsprings creaking in protest. It had been a long day and he decided he could shower in the morning. But before he lights his last evening cigarette, he caught sight of the photo under his pillow. In the rush of the alarm he had neglected to slip it into the deep end of the pillow case that morning, and something compels him to take it back out to look at. Some feeling he can’t quite place his finger on.

The picture is monochrome, but beginning to yellow with age and crumbling at the edges. A family portrait: a young boy sits in his Mother’s lap as a man stands tall to her left. A hand is delicately placed on her shoulder.

Even through the faded image Spy can see that he at least resembles his father. It’s most clear in his chin and hairline. Spy has the same broad shoulders and he assumes that they would have been about the same height. He knows he has his Mother’s eyes, at least in shape, and realizes that his slender limbs are inherited from her. He almost finds it funny how he notices something new each time he looks at it.

As foolish as it is for him to have it on his person, the photo is the only thing left from his life before. When he closes his eyes he likes to believe he can recall his Mother’s singing and his Father’s laughter. The cynicist in him knows that they’re fabrications of his mind, attempts to comfort himself.

It’s been a long time since the photograph was taken and Spy highly doubts that his parents would ever recognize their little boy now if they had lived. He’ll allow himself the amusement to think of what his life could have been if he had remained with them in their family home. He knows the reality, the most likely outcome would have been the same fate as his parents: an early end.

Instead, the possibility of “if” comes into play tonight. If he and his family had survived the occupation and if his father had not smuggled him to the southern part of the country alone. If he had not prayed in the wrong language and if he had not spent the first several months on the streets. If he was never handed a gun too big for his hands and if he never received a knife that fit too well in his slender fingers. There were a lot of if’s, and were it not for them then Spy never would have ended up being blown to pieces day in and day out in the middle of the Badlands. He honestly cannot decide if this is preferable. But it is what his life has become and he knows he feels a kind of acceptance for it.

Instead his father had the wisdom to send his only child south, smuggled in a crate in the dead of night. Spy spent his boyhood where the embers of resistance we beginning to catch. He spent the first few month’s running through the streets, learning how to pick pockets and swipe bread from unsuspecting stands. When that wasn’t enough, he learned what services to trade for necessities. Not even a full year later he was joining the resistance; learning how to become unseen in plain sight, the right things to say to get people to talk, to listen properly, to speak enough of a language to understand when something important was being said, to shoot a gun and wield a knife. And that was his life until the end of the war.

As a teen he had attempted to return home, but there wasn’t one to return to. No one knew his parent’s fate. Though he still kept the search for information alive even now, he was no closer to knowing and knew that with each passing year the chances grew slimmer. Time had a habit of burying history.

Deciding that he’d had enough with allowing himself such melancholy, Spy walked across his room and buried the picture deep in the dresser drawer. The time for if’s was past as were the events that had unfolded. Spy had the present to think about now, such as getting enough rest to handle what tomorrow’s battle would hold.


End file.
